Left to right: Thomas, Emily, Dewey, Trippy, Katie, Ivy, Tate, and Sarah Brown at Emerson Hospital. (Courtesy photo)
Katie Brown
of Still River Road knows a good thing when she sees it. That’s why she’s elected to have Dr. Ingrid Balcomb, Emerson Hospital OB/GYN, deliver all six of her children. “Little did we know that I’d eventually have six kids and that she’d deliver all of them,” said Brown. First came Sarah, now almost 11, then Thos, 9, Trevor, 7, Emily, 5, Tate, 2½, and Ivy, the newest addition to the Brown family at two months old. “Dr. Balcomb and I have built up a great relationship over all these years and all these babies,” Brown said. “She is really an important part of our family.”
What started as fortuitous luck in her early pregnancies became a conscious decision to make sure Dr. Balcomb welcomed each successive baby Brown into the world. “When I was having my second child, another doctor was on call, but I didn’t have Thos until Dr. Balcomb was back on call,” Brown said. “Luck would have it that she delivered babies number three and four. When it came time for my fifth, Dr. Balcomb gave me her home number in case I went into labor when she was not at the hospital. I had to use it. With Ivy we joked that I could not go into labor until she was back on call because she had to decorate her house for a Christmas party. So I was to stay put until she was ready. I had to call her cell phone at 9:30 at night, but she came and met me quite cheerfully. I couldn’t be more fortunate.”
The morning after Ivy was born, Dr. Balcomb visited the burgeoning Brown family. “As she walked in the door she announced that she had come up with a reason for me and my husband to have a seventh child,” said Brown. “She said that once the new maternity wing is done, we would have to use it. My husband just laughed nervously.”
